From the Principal

Professor Geoffrey Ward

This time a year ago my column for the Annual Review took its lead from Samuel Beckett’s meditation on the human condition Waiting for Godot, a two-act play in which one early reviewer complained that nothing happened – twice. As I walked around a campus dominated by ongoing new builds and emerging extensions – the Dining Hall, the North Wing Auditorium, practice spaces and guest rooms – it seemed as if we were waiting for something to take final shape and declare itself. Well, something happened, for sure, but it was neither what we expected nor what we wanted.

Along with the rest of collegiate Cambridge and the wider world beyond, Homerton has faced the impact of the pandemic. Our students have been particularly affected. The face-to-face supervisions which are the cornerstone of Cambridge teaching have had to be replaced by remote learning. And while their College accommodation is of a gratifyingly high standard (Homerton came first in a Daily Telegraph survey of student accommodation across Oxford and Cambridge last year), students’ rooms were intended to be a nest from which to fly to lectures and practicals before returning at day’s end, not a 24/7 pod with strict limitations on movement outside and on contact with peers within.

When an outbreak occurred at the beginning of Michaelmas term, there is no doubt that we were tested. But we learned from that. Moreover, our students have shown consideration, resilience and ingenuity in finding ways to work through these difficult circumstances. And some of the changes created in emergency conditions, such as the new reliance on computer-based learning, will undoubtedly have a permanent effect on the ways in which the University organises post-pandemic teaching in order for students to both absorb new knowledge at speed, and produce their best work.

Meanwhile the reputation of the College has done nothing but rise. The number of direct applications for undergraduate places at Homerton is up by over 25% this year, as it was the year before (this in a context where applications to Cambridge University as a whole have risen by nearer 10%). Even in a context where jobs are getting harder to find, the emails I receive from recent graduates now working in the Foreign Office, for NGOs or in many other prominent positions give ample testimony that Homerton is a both a destination of choice for the talented school-leaver and a launch-pad for the leaders of tomorrow. I am very proud of the Fellowship for

Homerton rowers practise in socially distanced form on Cavendish Lawns

The Principal cuts a cake marking the 10th anniversary of the College Charter in March 2020

helping our students to excel, and am particularly grateful to the senior team for overseeing this core activity while dealing with the ongoing difficulties of the pandemic. For example Dr Louise Joy has extended her portfolio as Vice-Principal, already full, to organise a Mental Health Awareness Week, supplemented by other measures focusing on student welfare at this difficult time.

By Statute and Ordinance, it falls to the VicePrincipal to lead the search for a new Principal, and that time has now come. I will demit office at the end of September this year. (Not so much Godot now, more Endgame…) I cannot imagine a more stimulating and satisfying role in UK higher education than the one I have been privileged to occupy for the last eight years. I am confident that Homerton will go from strength to strength. The College has the critical mass, the brilliant teachers and researchers, the readiness (where it is in our interest) to grow for strategic purposes, and, last but not least, the top-level students that are prerequisites for high and continued success, even by the world-leading standards of this ancient University. Those students become alumni who will look back with gratitude and pride at all that Homerton has made possible in their lives, and the pressures brought about by the current pandemic will not, I feel sure, be an impediment to this in the longer term.

Among the most loyal attendees of our Alumni Reunion Weekend are, still, some alumnae who studied at Homerton during the Second World War. Their experience was certainly different from those of their predecessors and their successors. However, the inevitable privations did nothing to dim their enthusiasm for Homerton, but rather made the invaluable opportunities it brought all the more precious. Respice Finem n